This is a weak argument by con however it is an equally weak rebuttal by Pro. The gun culture isn't really explained in any detail and Pro is right when he says that his other contention outweigh this particular contention although this is weak rebuttal therefore this contention is neutral.

Little Effect In Certain States

This is also a weak argument presented by Con. It had the potential to be a much stronger argument however Con chose to zoom in on Vermont. The statistics provided by Con are effective and the fact that there was an extremely low homicide rate did help his argument. Pro makes the same assumption that I made. You cannot use one example to prove a point. Especially a point about such a significant issue. He shows that there are many other factors that could have been taking place. I don't find Con's counter rebuttal very convincing. He shows that there are other purposes for gun bans in Vermont however these are for hunting and not for the jobs of civilians. He needed to effectively prove that guns are useful for civilians not just for the police and hunters. This contention was ended at this point and by this point Pro was winning the contention and therefore this is a win for him.

Self Defense

I think that Pro's counters to this argument have been misunderstood by voters. I will start with the argument itself and then move on to the counters. The argument regarding self defense was an important issue in this debate and therefore I'll analyze this in more depth. Con as very strong statistics that show that up to 2 million people use guns for self defense annually. The next part of Con's contention is a bit confusing. He says: '8.855 murders' This doesn't really make sense because you cannot have 8.855 people however this may be a silly understanding so I wont vote Con down based on this. At first I thought that this would be an evident con win after I'd began to read Pro's case. He seemed to go off topic talking about children killing people with guns. At the end of the argument it was evident that this did tie in to the argument. Whilst it does go slightly off topic because there is only a small link provided at the end this is not enough reason to dismiss the argument. He poses the question: 'Would you kill children just so you could defend yourself?'. It is true that the rebuttal was entirely relevant however Con was still obliged to counter-refute it and therefore this actually turns into an offense for Pro and he wins on this contention.

Illegal Guns

Con shows that there are almost as many illegal guns as the number of the American population.This is strong and backed up well with reliable sources. He shows that banning guns will not effect crime in any significant way since illegal guns cover 93% of crimes. A weaker rebuttal is provided by Pro since he only shows that 200,000 guns were stolen. Whilst this is a large amount, the percentage out of crime was significantly lower. Con completely ruins their counter rebuttal by saying that there will be positive effects in terms of less crime in the long term. What makes this even worse is that Pro manages to find out that there was a significant detail missing from the source that Con failed to mention and I am given no other choice than to keep this contention neutral. There were mistakes on both sides and this wasn't a particularly significant contention to the overall outcome of the debate.

This contention begins by showing that the gun accident statistics has surpassed the car accident statistics. More detail and statistics are provided and graphs and sources were used to back up this particular contention. The rebuttal provided by Con was sufficient and managed to successfully refute this particular contention. He proved that there was no evidence to suggest that there would be a net positive (or negative) based on this alone. He continues by showing that cars and guns have very different purposes. He also shows how Pro's source is unreliable due to the fact that the statistic provided was unreliable and had different statistics for different purposes. The purposes that pro stated that they were for were false and therefore Con wins this contention.

Mass Shootings

This is an extremely powerful contention - one of his best, that shows that 150 school shootings have taken place in the USA compared to the 1 school shooting that has occurred in the UK over the same period of time. If this was the 7 point distribution system, then I would have awarded conduct to Con for pro's unintentional offensive analogy that he provided however despite this analogy being offensive to some, I believe that the overall contention was extremely powerful. Con picks up on the fact that Pro said some offensive things to begin with, which was a good start because it picked out some weaknesses in the argument. This would have been difficult to properly refute and I don't think that I would have been able to do so myself. The rebuttal provided by Con wasn't enough for him to win the contention. He states that there are different cultures in the UK and the America. The real problem I found with that argument is that Con introduced an argument regarding gun culture as his first contention. This allowed Con to easily respond by showing that the differences in American and British culture was relating to gun culture. He shows that Con was actually benefiting his argument and that his statistics proved that guns needed to be reduced and a gun ban was the best way to do this. Providing the difference in guns between the UK and the USA is not helpful towards Con's argument. It shows that the US has a huge gun problem and they need to be reduced.

Homicide Rates

This was a clear win for Pro. Pro provided criminology statistics, university statistics and more to prove his point. He showed that you are more likely to kill an innocent than a criminal this significantly weakened all of Con's arguments since killing a family member is significant. He proved that without guns, family members and friends would be much less likely to die due to fatal injuries inflicted by their own family / friend. The 93% factor was unfortunately refuted by Pro which meant that the argument posed didn't make a difference. Assuming that it wasn't refuted, Pro still would have won since Con didn't seem to understand the homicide contention. Pro was referring to legal guns being accidentally used to kill friends and family. Pro could have responded to this in the final round more effectively however it wasn't required since there was a major misunderstanding in this contention and Con had already lost because of this.

Overall, I believe that this debate was fairly simple to judge after reading through it twice. At first Con appeared to have won. Looking deeper into the contentions I realized that it was not the case and although Tajshar had better conduct and sources I am forced to award Pro the win. Any doubt inflicted upon my decision was removed when I saw that Con had a 25+ elo advantage by making Pro pass a round.

This debate was really close however it came down to the rebuttals which shocked me greatly since originally I believe that Con was winning and had the advantage in the first round however I think that due to time constraints Con didn't do as well in the final rounds than he did in the first round (for arguments - not including the acceptance round).

This was for the voter's union and is definitely one of my longer RFDs.